Adobe said Monday that it's happy with the efforts of its engineers thus far to get a version of the company's Flash multimedia technology up and running on Apple's iPhone, but admitted there's much work left to be done.

"With respect to the iPhone, we are working on it," said Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen, responding to a question on the matter from a Jeffries & Co analyst during a quarterly conference call. "We have a version thats working on the emulation. This is still on the computer and you know, we have to continue to move it from a test environment onto the device and continue to make it work."

Narayen added that he's nevertheless "pleased with the internal progress" that's been made to date.

The Adobe chief's comments come one day after AppleInsider revealed that Apple at its developers conference last week was encouraging community members to adopt open source technologies like SproutCore -- from which it built portions of its new MobileMe service -- as a means of developing rich internet applications, rather than get hung up on proprietary browser plug-ins like Flash.

This isn't necessarily a new message on Apple's part. The Cupertino-based electronics maker has been advocating for the past year that iPhone developers make use of modern open standards as a means of promoting true interoperability and cross platform independence for next-generation internet applications.

This stance was partially driven by the company's determination to prevent the shabby Flash experience on its Mac platform from spilling over to the iPhone. Since Flash code is interpreted not by the Web browser but rather a plug-in, that's left Apple and other platform vendors reliant on Adobe to provide a suitable and stable runtime environment. That didn't happen with the Mac, as Adobe focused the majority of its efforts on polishing the Windows plug-in while the Mac version fell behind in both features and performance.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has also been openly critical of Adobe's fragmentation of Flash into desktop and "Lite" versions, stating that neither are suitable for use on his company's handheld products. Specifically, he said the desktop version "performs too slow to be useful" on the iPhone while Flash Lite is similarly useless in that it's not fully capable of running the plethora of content written for the desktop version.

Adobe, however, remains determined to deliver a version of Flash for the iPhone that would be distributed for free as a standalone application. That's assuming Apple, which has refused to aid the company in its mission outside of handing over its standard iPhone developer tools, accepts the finalized software into its upcoming App Store.

In the meantime, Adobe is also touting its Open Screen Project, which aspires to open portions of the Flash specification and partner with a consortium of companies to push the technology as a viable platform for rich internet apps. But as was noted in AppleInsider's three-part Flash Wars series, it won't matter much given that today's internet is dominated by Microsoft, Google, and Apple, none of which have Flash up on a pedestal.

Apple has a great deal of influence over OS and hardware design, but almost none over web design. They will not sway a significant number of people writing for Flash over to other technologies... the iPhone really needs Flash for the segment of people who use it regularly.

Apple has a great deal of influence over OS and hardware design, but almost none over web design. They will not sway a significant number of people writing for Flash over to other technologies... the iPhone really needs Flash for the segment of people who use it regularly.

I think the point is that other more open technologies are quickly replacing the need for Flash. Also, it's *because* Apple has such a great influence over hardware and now OS design, that their decision to push other technologies in place of Flash is gaining the traction it is.

In Windows, a window can be a document, it can be an application, or it can be a window that contains other documents or applications. Theres just no consistency. Its just a big grab bag of monkey...

Curious how the current Apple adds on Engadget are in Flash... Apple can't singlehandedly ban Flash of the internet. Considering how easy it is to make amazing stuff in Flex, I don't see the need either. It might be a resource hog on some systems, but that's not something that can't be fixed I think.

Good riddins Adobe. I think all mac users are fed up with Adobe's lousy product support and flash implementation for the mac.

Adobe used to have class in product, support and used to be a class company. They whored themselves to windows and put the mac at the bottom of their priority list. Their mac product specialists are arrogant and ignorant - they don't have a clue about macs.

That and the foot dragging to get Mac users current versions of their software, despite the fact that it was the Mac that put Adobe on the map in the first place, is why Apple will take their market share and make better products that aren't dependent on Adobe and their nasty attitude.

The web must be open and therefore we need to get rid of Flash. If you think their implementation on the Mac is lousy you haven't seen their implementation on Linux. On other platforms it just doesn't even exist! Windows will go one day and it's important that those alt. oses don't continue the old trend of supporting some closed technology.

Why must the web be open? You have a problem with Flash being closed but OSX is closed? Strange...just strange.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Buck

The web must be open and therefore we need to get rid of Flash. If you think their implementation on the Mac is lousy you haven't seen their implementation on Linux. On other platforms it just doesn't even exist! Windows will go one day and it's important that those alt. oses don't continue the old trend of supporting some closed technology.

The web must be open and therefore we need to get rid of Flash. If you think their implementation on the Mac is lousy you haven't seen their implementation on Linux. On other platforms it just doesn't even exist! Windows will go one day and it's important that those alt. oses don't continue the old trend of supporting some closed technology.

As of May 1, 2008, with the introduction of the Open Screen project, the Flash specification is starting to open up.

Adobe had previously released a rather extensive collection of Flash-reated specificaitons intended for use royalty-free by content creators, but the license agreement accompanying the documentation had prohibited it from being used by people intent on building an alternative player. Those restrictions have been lifted.

The intention, apparently, is to make it easier for any developer to make their own 3rd-party Flash player (particularly for mobile devices and less popular OSes, for which Adobe is not interested in spending its own development resources), using published specifications and reference designs from Adobe as a central source to help keep all the different implementations interoperable.

The defacto standard for web video is flash, it's not a great thing, but it's a reality. So until the iPhone supports flash, it doesn't have the "real internet" like Stevo thinks it does. I'd trade exchange support for flash is a heartbeat.

Well, the OS itself may be as closed as it wants. The web however is supposed to be used by very different people. That's why the standards are important - it's when you want to do something in Linux for example, you just boot that up and there's all the content, fully functional and not crippled. Not requiring you to go through an installation or configuration nightmare. The benefits are obvious.

Adobe said Monday that it's happy with the efforts of its engineers thus far to get a version of the company's Flash multimedia technology up and running on Apple's iPhone, but admitted there's much work left to be done.

Considering Adobe doesn't even have Flash running well on the "full" version of OS X on current consumer-level hardware (regardless of whose "fault" that may be), I'm sure there's an incredible amount of work to be done to get it to run on the iPhone.

I see nothing in the SDK rules that would prevent Adobe from grabbing WebKit and making their own iPhone browser with Flash included. Since this mythical Abobe browser wouldn't be calling another app to run Flash it violates no to Apple, as far as I can tell. Though the threatening of this may make Apple reconsider fast.

But for all we know Apple isn't opposed to Flash so much as it's opposed to a crappy version of Flash. The fact that Adobe has had months to port it and still have work to does, at least in part, validate Jobs' statements as to why it wasn't included from the start.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

The web must be open and therefore we need to get rid of Flash. If you think their implementation on the Mac is lousy you haven't seen their implementation on Linux. On other platforms it just doesn't even exist! Windows will go one day and it's important that those alt. oses don't continue the old trend of supporting some closed technology.

if it was for the linux people , the web was nothing more than a maze of text and people would not even use GUI but only typing commands.

Ie. Adobe's admitted they've been lazy the last few years keeping the OS X version of flash up to date, and are now regretting it, because they won't be first to the show in the new greatest gadget out there.

Why must the web be open? You have a problem with Flash being closed but OSX is closed? Strange...just strange.

Talk about apples and oranges! The OS is something you can pick. You can't choose which internet you use. Imagine if somone told you that because you drove a cetain type of car you can to take the slow, pot-holed back roads, while drivers of other cars got to take the 4-lane superhighway. All this despite the fact that your taxes went towards constructing the highway!

Because Flash is prorietary, each OS/browser vendor can't decide what level of support to include in their OS/browser to benefit their customers and distinguish their product. They are at the mercy of the Adobe traffic cop.

Adobe has the right to make their products as proprietary as they wish. But the internet itself should be based as much on open standards as possible to allow fair use by anyone who wants to drive on it without a 3rd party playing traffic cop.

BTW: I don't think OS X is nearly as closed as you think it is. Sure the lines of code themselves are proprietary (except the open sourced Darwin parts), but the interfaces, data standards (ie, iCal events, contacts, etc), directory services, etc are largely based on using open standards.

I get upset when web sites dont fully work because of either flash or someother plugin doesnt work on my iPhone....It supposed to be the "real internet on your phone" correct? So then what gives....Mr. Jobs give us the full internet, just like you say....thats all.

so what about the huge section of the web that is flash based (like my own website)?

will it just be ignored?

Will I need to produce a new website in a different app just so it can be viewed on an iPhone?

they are not only screwing adobe but a huge amount of people who chose flash as a platform for their websites.

I am all for open source but this is going to cost a lot of people a lot of time, money and resources

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wiggin

BTW: I don't think OS X is nearly as closed as you think it is. Sure the lines of code themselves are proprietary (except the open sourced Darwin parts), but the interfaces, data standards (ie, iCal events, contacts, etc), directory services, etc are largely based on using open standards.

in a way the same thing can be said about Flash. the code is proprietary but you can make whatever you want look like whatever you want, and say whatever you want...

So when Flash comes to the iPhone, and you make the mistake of hitting the back button in your browser off a Flash-heavy page, and the system hangs (as it will, half the time,) can you Force-Quit just Safari, or do you have to cold-boot the whole thing?

I get upset when web sites dont fully work because of either flash or someother plugin doesnt work on my iPhone.

I get upset when [Internet browsers] dont fully work because of either flash or some other plugin doesnt work [correctly] on my [OS].

It's a two way street. This effort that Adobe has apparently been paying to Flash on the iPhone is proof that they finally get the hint. I guess the multi-year coffee break is over for their OS X development team.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

The defacto standard for web video is flash, it's not a great thing, but it's a reality. So until the iPhone supports flash, it doesn't have the "real internet" like Stevo thinks it does. I'd trade exchange support for flash is a heartbeat.

Sheldon

The problem is that you don't NEED Flash to play a video and you shouldn't either. It's more layers than necessary simply to play a video. And more than anything else, it's not really hardware accelerated either. When plenty of web video would bode well to be in H.264 or any other format that can be hardware accelerated (especially on mobile devices), they pick some silly software container format, stick it in a Flash player and have the CPU waste cycles because power is oh-so abundant.

Just like all those websites out there that are optimized for IE7 -- because IE7 is the defacto internet since everybody is using it.

Apple is really screwing them, too. The iPhone should work with IE7 optimized websites.

First of all, optimizing a web site for a particular browser is a web development no-no.

Second, not everyone is using IE7 and it doesn't have true web standards support. Even on my windows machine at home and work - I use Firefox. On Mac, I use Safari. Pretty much everyone at work who is forced to use XP Pro machines (that crash once a day - no joke) are using Firefox. they all hate IE7.

Third, the iPhone should pay fair across the board - handling web standards correctly - and it does!

The problem is that you don't NEED Flash to play a video and you shouldn't either. It's more layers than necessary simply to play a video. And more than anything else, it's not really hardware accelerated either. When plenty of web video would bode well to be in H.264 or any other format that can be hardware accelerated (especially on mobile devices), they pick some silly software container format, stick it in a Flash player and have the CPU waste cycles because power is oh-so abundant.

That's not the point, there are lots better ways to deal with a lot of the content on the web. The point is that a big chunk of the web IS flash and Apple has said the iPhone gives you the "Real internet" which it doesn't. Then to rub salt in the wounds, the T&C's of the developing on the phone say that Flash cannot ever be developed as a plug-in for safari. So there is only two choices, the most obvious is for apple to wake up and include it, the second is for another undoubtably shittier browser to spring up that actually handles flash. Both are more likely than the entire dearth of websites to suddenly wake up and decide to throw Flash away and develop a new format that will work better.

The bottom line is Flash is dumb for video, but it's what's out there, not just for video but also for lots of other sites. I want my "Real Internet"

I don't understand this hostility towards Adobe Flash/Flex. I am a Mac convert and also a Flex developer. I haven't seen a single hickup in the Flash implementation on the Mac (including heavy debugging of code). Instead of just bashing away at Flash and making claims that it doesn't work correctly on the Mac: why not just list a few sites that crash a browser on the Mac?

I'm sorry, I just don't see it that way. At least 90-95% of the Flash I see is advertisements. I realize that site need the ad revenue to keep going, but the vast majority of the ads I see could be accomplished with animated GIFs (ok, I jest, but you get the point). The rest of the Flash is useful (speaking as a user, not as a developer), but Flash isn't the only, or even the best, option to create that functionality. But hey, I don't spend all day on Facebook, YouTube, etc, so maybe I'm just not going to the "hip" sites that use all the cool Flash.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChrisGot

I don't understand this hostility towards Adobe Flash/Flex. I am a Mac convert and also a Flex developer. I haven't seen a single hickup in the Flash implementation on the Mac (including heavy debugging of code). Instead of just bashing away at Flash and making claims that it doesn't work correctly on the Mac: why not just list a few sites that crash a browser on the Mac?

While I don't have problems with Flash crashing Safari, it is a HUGE resource hog. I shouldn't need to have 4 GB of RAM in my MacBook Pro just to prevent the hard drive from trashing every time I load more than a couple of tabs in Safari with Flash on them! Not everyone has a quad-core Mac Pro with 8 GB RAM and multi-terabyte RAIDs.

How do you know that 90-95% are ads? Do you check all sites and advertisements to see what they're written in? I for one (and many other Flex/Flash developers I know) have written lots of sites and apps, but not a single advertisement (and never will)! Sure there are other good development tools out there, but none offer quite the same possibilities as Flex/Flash. OTOH, did it ever matter to you if that desktop app you downloaded was written in C++, Pascal, Visual Basic, etc.? Probably not.

There's also no need for 4GB of RAM or a quad-core Mac Pro to run Flash, nor does Flash have anything to do with your harddisk trashing. It simply loads the plugin for the browser (which is quite small) and the program comes via your Internet connection. So why blame Flash when your harddisk goes wild?

flash bogs down a computer with slower processor, iphone has a "phone" slower processor and most of flash is those crappy ads i don't want to see anyway, why use up my processor for that junk. good riddance to flash. i thought macworld had a big discussion of flash and how open source was better and that flash is too bloated, SJ has a reason not to let flash fill his iphone with sucking flash ads
i don't want it.....not on the new mobile platform.
there has got to be a better way

How do you know that 90-95% are ads? Do you check all sites and advertisements to see what they're written in? I for one (and many other Flex/Flash developers I know) have written lots of sites and apps, but not a single advertisement (and never will)! Sure there are other good development tools out there, but none offer quite the same possibilities as Flex/Flash. OTOH, did it ever matter to you if that desktop app you downloaded was written in C++, Pascal, Visual Basic, etc.? Probably not.

There's also no need for 4GB of RAM or a quad-core Mac Pro to run Flash, nor does Flash have anything to do with your harddisk trashing. It simply loads the plugin for the browser (which is quite small) and the program comes via your Internet connection. So why blame Flash when your harddisk goes wild?

You are right, I don't "know" that estimate. I make the assumption that most of the animated ads I see are Flash based. I could be wrong. I also stop going to sites that are bogged down with ads. Weather.com is a good example. That site has locked up and crashed Safari on occasion. I assume most of the superfluous crap on that site is Flash. Again, I could be wrong. But it's a prime example of ads run amok and a web designer doing things just because they can, not because it's useful. (Note, I've also noticed that any sites that load the Flip4Mac plugin also bog down my MBP and peg one of the cores of the CPU to 100% within a few minutes of loading, so some of the effects I see could also be due to that.) Having a few of those ad laden sites open caused constant hard drive access until I increased RAM from 2 GB to 4 GB. Do I know for certain the Flash plugin is responsible? No, but it's a pretty strong causal relationship.

I also don't frequent many sites that require complex interactions that Flash allows. So no online gaming and such and the reason my %'s are perhaps skewed. Mostly news sites, message boards, etc (again, lots of ads, not but interactivity). I occasionally visit YouTube, but I put that in the category of "things that could be done with open standards." And a month or so ago in one of these Flash debates someone pointed to an entirely Flash based web site as a good example of use of Flash. In my opinion it was a mediocre site. It was as if the developer used Flash exclusively simply because they didn't know of lick of HTML and Flash was the only tool in their toolkit!

Like any tool, Flash has it's place, when used appropriately. But it's too often abused (surely by nobody here ), either for gratuitous purposes or because inability/unwillingness to use other tools. For my needs it has far more negatives then positives, so I'd just as soon be rid of it.

As far as do I care what my desktop apps are written in? No, I don't. But if it's a slow, cumbersome app that bogs down my computer (MS Word 6.0, anyone?), you can bet that I'll stop using it and switch to something more efficient.